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The Sad Truth About Identifying as an Asexual

I’ve been active within the asexual community for over a year now I’ve started to see the problems and the cracks that come to identifying as an asexual. It has nothing to do with the asexuals themselves. It has to deal with (mostly) everyone else.

There’s one thing I really hate and that’s the term “invisible sexuality” but to be honest that’s the only way I can describe it. It’s either people don’t know we exist or choose to ignore that we do. Asexuals face a lot of acephobia from allosexuals (allosexuals is a term the asexual community has developed to describe people who are not asexual). We are either seen as not “normal” enough or not “oppressed” enough and it’s starting to get on my last nerve. There is literally no place where we can fit in.

I’m an aroace (aromantic asexual) and I have seen people say that my romantic & sexual orientations are “too straight” for the LGBT+ community. I am not “too straight” because I’m not straight at all I’m an aromantic asexual who doesn’t feel any romantic or sexual orientation to any gender. Saying I’m “too straight” is both acephobic and arophobic. The only time it is okay to call an asexual “straight” is if that’s how they want to be identified. That’s not how I identify so towards me that is acephobic and arophobic.

I’ve also seen people say that we, asexuals, do not face any oppression or that acephobia doesn’t exist. Well spoiler alert we are oppressed, maybe not in the same what that other communities have been but we have, I can give you a few examples: up until 2013 asexuality was classed as a mental disorder by the DSM. Just read the whole of this post. The fact people say that acephobia is fake baffles me because it’s usually the acephobic people who say this. “Asexuality doesn’t exist” This is a form of acephobia. Another form of acephobia is if you try to “convert” or make the asexual do something that they are uncomfortable with by making them feel guilty for their sexuality.

I’ve had a lot of time to think about the acephobia I’ve experienced in my life and let me tell you that I have experienced it. Some of the acephobia I’ve faced has been unintentional because of me being still in the closet apart from the internet (shocker!) and the fact that I doubt my older family members know what the term “asexual” means. I’ve also been in the room / near someone when someone has used my sexuality as a joke and an insult towards someone else. I do believe I have faced acephobia which I do believe is intentional. I have had the “but that’s not fair on me” when it comes to doing sexual acts in a relationship. It’s not nice to have all this negativity surrounding asexuality because it’s the one thing that I love about myself and accept about myself but all these comments that I see against my sexuality make me think otherwise and I don’t want that. Because I’ve finally found a place where I belong.

Here’s some things that you need to remember:

Acephobia exists and it needs to stop

Asexuals are apart of the community

Asexuals belong in the community

Asexuals belong at pride

Asexuality exists

Note: I’ve reworded and rephrased this blog post more times than I can count because I didn’t want to unintentionally insult someone but when it comes to this topic it’s very touch and go. This blog post is mainly a place for me to vent my feels and explain my feels about the posts of seen on how aroaces, hetaces and hetaros “shouldn’t be” included in the LGBT+ community.

2 thoughts on “The Sad Truth About Identifying as an Asexual”

As a person who’s trying to figure out if I’m asexual, I completely get what you’re saying. I’ve heard people (who openly support the LGBTQ+ community) say asexuality is not real. I’ve even (jokingly, because I really wanted to know what they thought) said I felt like they weren’t acknowledging my existence… And they said “my professor says asexuality doesn’t exist”. And since they consider their professor’s word as the law… Let’s just say I felt seriously uncomfortable.

Yeah exactly like why would we make such a thing up? We don’t want attention we want to be accepted and have proper representation in the media. I try to ignore what people say but sometimes it gets a bit too much
*hugs* all we can do is stick together.